


To Find That Simple Kind of Love

by LayALioness



Series: (belated) Bellarke Week! [5]
Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-09
Updated: 2015-08-09
Packaged: 2018-04-13 17:43:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,310
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4531158
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LayALioness/pseuds/LayALioness
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Now they’re sophomores in university, and things haven’t changed all that much. Bellamy is still hotheaded, unfairly attractive, a closeted nerd, and her best friend. Clarke is still an accidental suck-up, the forever designated driver, and always covered in paint. She’s also still in love with her best friend.</p>
            </blockquote>





	To Find That Simple Kind of Love

**Author's Note:**

> My internet keeps breaking only when I'm on ao3 and I think it's my computer passive aggressively trying to make me do something more productive with my time. But joke's on you, computer; writing and posting unnecessary amounts of fanfic is as productive as I get.
> 
> So I'd like to blame my lack of posts on my computer, but really it's me being lazy and binge watching Law and Order. Eventually I will finish bellarke week. One day...
> 
> Also, I know I usually post Bellamy being pathetic and obvious about Clarke, so have some pathetic/obvious Clarke pining after Bellamy. Just to mix things up. Kind of. Not really.
> 
> title from Say It Just Say It by The Mowgli's

“I need your help finding a girlfriend,” Bellamy says, voice muffled by Clarke’s comforter. He’s currently sprawled across her bed, with his face half on her lap. It’d be awkward, if this wasn’t one of their usual positions.

“What,” Clarke says, glancing up from her computer. She’s supposed to be writing an essay for her Art History class, but mostly she’s just photoshopping Bellamy’s abs onto pictures of horses. She’s going to post them all on Tumblr and tag him. “Why do you want a girlfriend?”

Clarke has known Bellamy Blake since they were eleven, and on the Battle of the Books team. They hated each other for the first half of the year, until they realized they’d probably win more games if they worked together. Even then, they still refused to think of each other as friends until high school, when John Murphy called Clarke a cold stone bitch, and Bellamy punched him in the face for it.

Now they’re sophomores in university, and things haven’t changed all that much. Bellamy is still hotheaded, unfairly attractive, a closeted nerd, and her best friend. Clarke is still an accidental suck-up, the forever designated driver, and always covered in paint. She’s also still in love with her best friend.

“I need a girlfriend,” Bellamy mutters, clearly not excited about the prospect, “And I need your help getting one.”

“Because you’re inept when it comes to the opposite gender,” Clarke says knowingly, and pets his hair a little when he grumbles.

“I’m not inept,” he says, “I get laid.”

Clarke snorts. “That’s because you let your face do the talking for you,” she argues. “Admit it; whenever you need to have an extended conversation with a pretty girl, you choke.”

“I don’t _choke_ ,” Bellamy grumbles, rolling so his nose is poking into her stomach. “We just never have anything in common!”

“Step one in finding a girlfriend; pick someone you might have something in common with. I.e.: _not_ the sorority girl at the gym, and _not_ the badass biker at the bar.”

“So, no one interesting,” Bellamy clarifies.

Clarke frowns, not sure if she should feel insulted. “There are plenty of interesting girls without sex packs and tattoos,” she says, petulant. Bellamy turns over so he’s smiling up at her.

“You’re very interesting,” he soothes. “But I need to find someone interesting, that I can date.”

She definitely feels insulted, but there’s no way to say that without him asking why, which. Well, that’s not really an option. “Why do you need a girlfriend, anyway?”

Bellamy heaves one of his characteristic sighs, and sits up. “Raven bet me I couldn’t get one by the end of the semester.” This makes more sense than the other options Clarke had been considering; namely, quarter-life crisis, and that he’d been binge-watching The Bachelorette again and is feeling lonely. Raven was always going around, betting people on everything, from who could name more Harry Potter spells, to who had the faster time for the fifty-yard dash.

“Why the end of the semester?”

Bellamy shrugs. “I think she just wanted a time frame that’s easy to remember.” He stares at Clarke a little more intensely than she thinks the situation warrants. “So, will you help me?”

“Obviously,” Clarke scoffs. “But just so you know, I demand half your winnings, and also a present. Something nice.”

“Like what?”

Clarke shrugs. “I’ll leave it up to your interpretation. First things first; you’ve seen the movies. It’s makeover time.”

She calls Lexa, partially because Lexa is the most fashionable person she knows, and partially to piss Bellamy off. She knows they secretly like each other, but it’s hidden deeply under a thick pretense of mutual hatred. She’d say she doesn’t really get it, but. It’s essentially how she and Bellamy were at the start, too.

“This is disastrous,” Lexa declares, making a broad gesture. Bellamy scowls.

“You just gestured to all of me.”

“It’s good to know your eyesight is not lacking,” Lexa says wryly, while Clarke does her best not to laugh.

Bellamy points an accusatory finger at her. “Don’t think you’re getting away with this,” he says.

“I don’t know what you mean,” Clarke says primly, raising her phone. “Say ‘Parcheesi.’”

“You’re the worst,” he says instead, and she takes some pictures of his neck at weird angles, so he looks fat.

Lexa doesn’t actually do much to alter his appearance because, despite everything she says about him, Bellamy is very attractive. It’s not like there’s much to improve. Mostly she just styles his hair a little, so the curls aren’t _so_ messy, and then makes him change out his cargo shorts for jeans.

“This is absurd,” Lexa says once he leaves. She’s looking at Clarke like she’s disappointed in her, and everyone else should be, too. “Why don’t you just _tell_ the boy?”

“ _Because_ ,” Clarke whines, flopping back on her bed. At this point, Lexa already knows she’s pathetic, so there’s no point trying to hide it. “He doesn’t feel the same way.”

“You exhaust me,” Lexa scoffs, collecting her bag. “Call me when you’re finished being idiotic.”

Clarke met Lexa when Bellamy took her to a gay bar, the night after her eighteenth birthday.

The night of her eighteenth birthday she spent with her parents and their friends, shaking Clarke’s hand and giving her envelopes filled with bank bonds and money orders. She wore a fancy dress and her dad let her drink champagne even though she was underage. She liked going out with Bellamy better.

Bellamy googled gay bars in their city, and the one he took her to had the most stars on Yelp, but he must not have actually read all the reviews because when they showed up, security refused to let him in, since men weren’t allowed. Clarke refused to go in without him, so instead of just heading to the next club on the list, he borrowed an old, awful dress from his sister, and let Clarke put makeup on him. It turned out to be a mostly moot point, since Clarke met Lexa just five minutes after walking in, and spent most of the night talking with her while Bellamy had to fend off a few women that thought he was just pre-op.

Clarke dated Lexa through most of her freshman year, before they decided to just be friends. Apparently, the only person that couldn’t tell she loved Bellamy was Bellamy himself, and while Lexa was alright playing second fiddle at the beginning, thinking Clarke might get over him eventually, she got tired waiting around.

Clarke doesn’t set out trying to sabotage Bellamy’s prospects, but it becomes very obvious very quickly that whenever they’re seen together, everyone assumes they’re a couple. She really does try to wingman him, but unless she starts every sentence with _we’re just friends, seriously_ , it just sounds like she’s bragging about her boyfriend.

Bellamy, of course, doesn’t catch on. Academically, he’s probably the smartest person Clarke knows—excluding Raven, to make it a fair fight—but when it comes to reading women, Bellamy Blake is painfully oblivious.

“I don’t get it,” he groans, leaning his head on the bar. The wood is sticky, and Clarke’s pretty sure someone has had sex on this counter, so she gently slips a napkin under him. “I thought, you know, they see _you_ and they think; okay, so a gorgeous, brilliant girl voluntarily hangs out with this guy—clearly, he’s not a sociopath, or anything.”

“To be fair, I would probably still hang out with you if you were a sociopath,” Clarke says, pointedly ignoring the part where he called her _gorgeous and brilliant_ , because if she thinks about it, she’ll probably cry, and she doesn’t need that. She’s pathetic enough already.

“You do have low standards,” Bellamy grins, and Clarke hates how he always seems to revert back to self-deprecation.

“My friends are _awesome_ ,” she argues, and his grin softens, and she _hates_ what it does to her. “Even you.”

“Only the best for the princess,” Bellamy agrees, reaching out to tug on her curls. He used to call her that back when they were still nemeses, because the book she voted on the Battle list was _Confessions of An Ugly Step-Sister_ , and because he knew she hated the nickname. She’s still not really sure when it became a term of endearment.

Clarke kissed Bellamy when she was sixteen. They were at a party—because Bellamy had been invited, and dragged her along. Clarke was never invited to parties in high school, because she was shy and slightly awkward and a little too passionate about gay rights, but Bellamy convinced her to go anyway. She got drunk on strawberry wine coolers, so she’d have an out, and then cornered him somewhere in the living room and kissed him. He let her lick into his mouth for a few minutes, and it was terrible because she was sloppy and drunk and had never done it before, and then he gently pulled her away. The smile he gave her was gentle and understanding and she hated it.

They didn’t talk about it in the morning. She pretended not to care, and he didn’t bring it up, and everything went back to normal. Mostly. She still thinks about it.

Clarke’s phone rings in the middle of her spinning class, with Octavia’s name blinking out at her. She mouths _sorry_ to the instructor, and leaves to take it—mostly because she feels like she’s about to die. Octavia doesn’t really call her a lot; they grew up in the same town, and have most of the same friends, and she’s best friends with her brother, so they get along alright. But Octavia’s still in high school, and they don’t have that much in common.

“O?” Clarke asks, hesitant. “Is everything okay?”

“My brother’s an idiot,” Octavia growls, and Clarke tries not to sigh. She’s used to playing mediator between the Blake siblings.

“You’ll have to be more specific.”

Apparently, Bellamy used their latest Skype session to interrogate her on university visits and applications, since she’s just four months shy of graduating. Which is why she decided to tell him that Indra, owner of the dojo where Octavia works part-time, has offered her a full-time position after school, and she isn’t planning on going to college.

“I just don’t see the point in wasting the time and money, when I don’t even need a degree for what I want to do,” Octavia argues, and Clarke can’t help agreeing.

“I’ll see what I can do,” she promises, and hangs up.

Bellamy made her a copy of his room key at Home Depot, at the beginning of the year, because he constantly has his headphones in, or sleeps through her knocking. She unlocks the door and walks in, to find him spread out on his bed, glaring at his computer screen. He’s watching _Troy_ , which he only ever watches when he wants to feel irrationally angry. Clarke crosses over to sink down beside him, and he moves over so she can settle in against his side.

“She called you?” he guesses, and Clarke nods. There’s no real point in denying it, and this way he won’t go through the whole story again and work himself up even more. “I just—” he huffs, annoyed. “I just want what’s best for her future,” he explains, running a hand through his hair five times before Clarke finally grabs it.

“I know that,” she says slowly. Angry Bellamy is essentially a woodland creature that needs to be spoken to softly and with small words. “ _She_ knows that. But eventually you’re going to have to let her decide what that means, for herself.”

Bellamy sighs, leaning his head down on her shoulder, breathing hot on her neck. “Sometimes I think she just does these things to piss me off,” he admits. Clarke snorts.

“Way to make it all about you,” she teases, and he laughs.

“You would’ve made a good big sister,” he decides, and Clarke shrugs, dislodging him a little.

“Nah, I’m too self-absorbed.” She takes in his pajamas, and the glasses crooked on his nose. He only ever wears them at home, because he thinks they make his face look pinched. Clarke sort of has a thing for his glasses, and she’s privately glad she’s the only person that gets to see him with them on. “No hunting for girlfriends tonight?” she guesses.

“I’m starting to think I’m impossible to date,” Bellamy muses. “I will always be the hot one night stand they’ll compare their husbands to in ten years. That’s my lot in life.”

“I’m sure that sucks for you,” Clarke snorts. Honestly, she’s a little relieved; it’s one thing to see Bellamy go home with girls from the bars, because it’s always just sex. He never goes to breakfast with them, or marathons _Game of Thrones_. But if Bellamy actually found someone to settle down with, well. Clarke’s not sure she’d be able to watch that.

They fall asleep sometime in the middle of _Willow_ , and wake up to Clarke’s ringtone. Bellamy’s head is pillowed on her stomach, with his arms wrapped around her thighs, and Clarke tries to wriggle out of his grip without getting turned on. He grunts a little, and squeezes more than she thinks is altogether necessary, but eventually rolls over to hide his face in a pillow.

“Hello?” she says, groggy.

“Griffin where the hell are you? We have lab at nine!” Raven pauses. “Did you get laid? Did you get laid and _I missed it_?” Raven is over-invested in everyone’s sex life, but she takes a special interest in Clarke’s, since it’s so sparse.

It’s not that Clarke doesn’t _like_ sex; she just sucks at hooking up casually, and she hasn’t been in an actual relationship since Lexa, so aside from letting Raven experiment on her some months earlier, she hasn’t seen much action lately.

“I fell asleep at Bellamy’s,” Clarke admits, because there’s no point in lying about it; Raven instantly _knows_ if someone’s had sex recently. She says it’s something about their walk, but Clarke’s pretty sure she has some sort of psychic connection to other peoples’ reproductive organs.

“How’s that whole girlfriend thing going?” Raven asks smugly, and if Clarke wasn’t sure it would literally kill her, she’d want Bellamy to win the bet, just so Raven would lose. Raven _never_ loses.

“He’s decided he’s not cut out for it, and is going to die alone,” Clarke says, and Bellamy snorts into the pillow before reaching out and pinching her side.

“I think we both know he won’t be _alone_ ,” Raven says, and Clarke sighs. The only person that doesn’t know really is Bellamy.

“I’ll meet you at the lab,” Clarke snaps, and she can _hear_ Raven smirking.

“You should jump him,” she muses, “Now, while he’s sleepy and vulnerable.”

“ _Goodbye_ ,” Clarke hisses, hanging up.

Clarke only signed up for an engineering lab because Raven goaded her into it, and she’s only passing because she shares the class with Raven and Wick, and whenever she’s taking too long trying to figure out how to wire something, they get impatient and do it for her. She’d feel bad about using them, except she’s pretty sure they know, and just like wiring things.

“What do you even get out of the bet?” Clarke asks, leaning on her hand to watch Raven and Wick squabble over her project. It’s a remote controlled car, powered by a lemon. She thinks they’re arguing over taping a miniature flamethrower to the car, as a sort of jetpack, but she can’t really tell.

“Which bet?” Raven asks, genuine. She has, on average, five bets going with different people at any one time.

“Bellamy’s,” Clarke says, and Raven grins.

“His dignity,” she says gleefully. “Also, fifty bucks.”

“What’d you bet Blake?” Wick asks. He’s wearing a headlamp for some unknown reason, and it keeps drooping down into his eyes.

“That he won’t get a girlfriend by the end of the semester,” Raven says, and Wick nods along. The headlamp falls and catches on his nose, but he doesn’t seem to care.

“Reyes,” Wick says, pinning two wires with his teeth while the professor stares in horror. “Bet you fifty bucks I’ll have a girlfriend by the end of the week.”

Raven scoffs. “You’re worse at women than Bellamy,” she says, eyes narrowed, no doubt trying to determine his endgame. Wick just smiles back. “You’re on,” she decides.

“Mr. Wick,” the professor splutters, “Please refrain from putting electrical cords _in your mouth_.”

Wick grins cheerfully, flicking the remote on. The car stutters to life. “No promises.”

When Clarke walks into Bellamy’s dorm, she finds him putting on a button-up shirt, and wearing the jeans Lexa picked out. His curls are pushed back off his forehead, and his contacts are in.

“Oh, are we going out?” Clarke asks. She’d sort of wanted to stay in tonight, working on a sketch for her Drawing II class while Bellamy ranted about Boris Pasternak in the background.

Bellamy grimaces, apologetic. “Actually, Miller wanted it to be just us,” he says, and Clarke bobs her head idiotically.

“No, yeah, that makes sense,” she says, trying not to wince. “I’ve totally been hogging you.” She smiles a little.

“Well, you are my best friend,” Bellamy says, clearly relieved she understands. “Don’t worry, tomorrow I promise; you and me. I might even borrow a dress from O, again.”

“You did get hit on a lot.”

“I look hot in drag,” Bellamy agrees, locking the door. She waves him off a little awkwardly.

“What are you doing here?” Raven asks, glancing up from the floor. She’s been collecting old toasters and vacuum cleaners, and taking them apart in their dorm. Clarke isn’t sure why yet, but she’s betting it has something to do with world domination.

“I live here,” Clarke frowns. It’s true she hasn’t been spending much time in her own room lately, but surely Raven hasn’t forgotten about her, yet.

“Not really,” Raven shrugs. “You usually follow Bellamy around until two AM and then wander in and pass out.”

Clarke’s frown deepens. Raven’s motto has always been some variation of _emotions are stupid and_ you’re _stupid for feeling them_ , but her tone is definitely less apathetic than usual. “You’re not feeling neglected, are you? We can hang out and watch the _Sarah Connor Chronicles_ if you want.”

“I’m not a pet dog, _Jesus_ ,” Raven says sharply, and Clarke flinches. She seems to notice, and softens. “I’m not jealous or anything—I just wish you would _make a move_ , already.”

Clarke automatically goes to argue, but Raven just waves a socket wrench threateningly.

“That boy would follow you through a nuclear fucking apocalypse, Griffin,” Raven glares, “But sooner or later he’s going to think you’re not interested, and move on.”

“He’s—it’s not—we kissed once, okay?” Clarke huffs. It’s the first time she’s ever said it out loud, besides when she told Wells, which didn’t even count because he’d moved when they were eight and so he never even _met_ Bellamy. “And the next day, he just acted like it never even happened. He was being _nice_ , letting me down easy, so just. Just _drop it_.”

Raven stares at Clarke, at a loss for words, for a change. Finally, she says “Okay. Sorry.”

“It’s fine,” Clarke mutters, grabbing her shower bag and slipping out into the hall.

She knows what she and Bellamy look like—cuddling in his bed, falling asleep together, making each other breakfast in the morning. Their friends, and even their parents, she’s pretty sure, have always been waiting for them to _just get together, already_. They’ve suffered through the teasing, with easy smiles and shakes of the head, but if anything it just makes it _worse_.

Because she knows what it looks like, what it could _be_ like, but. She’ll take what he can give, and eventually she’ll be fine with it.

The next day, he finds her in the library, sitting at their table. He slides into the seat across from her and drums his fingers against the desk for a few minutes before blurting “I have a date.”

“What?” Clarke says, looking at him over her glasses. She only really needs them for fine print, but the frames are a fun pattern. Bellamy looks more nervous than she’s ever seen him, and she’s seen him before finals.

“A date,” he repeats. “Last night, I met a girl at the bar.”

Of course—with her gone, the girls must have flocked to him. Miller probably proved a much more successful wingman.

“Cool,” Clarke says, voice impressively even. She sends a mental apology to her high school drama teacher. “What’s her name?”

“Echo,” Bellamy admits, and Clarke can’t stop the snort in time. He just grins a little. “I know, weird. But it’s not like she chose it, herself.”

“True,” Clarke shrugs. “When’s the date?”

“Tonight,” Bellamy says, fidgeting. “I figured you and Raven could maybe tag along? It’s at the pool hall, so. Maybe you could bring Wick. Or Lexa,” he adds a little grudgingly.

“Wow, you must be _really_ nervous,” Clarke grins, and he kicks her under the table.

“Why on earth did I agree to this,” Lexa says into her wine glass, because even at pool halls, Lexa orders wine. Apparently it’s a subpar merlot that she’s refusing to drink, so now she’s just holding the glass and periodically glaring at it.

“Because you’re my friend,” Clarke says, “And because you had nothing better to do.” Lexa glares at her for good measure.

They’ve gotten a booth some feet from the bar, where Bellamy and Echo are flirting over a bowl of peanuts. She’s pretty, and nice. He introduced her to them, before trailing off, and she’d made a few jokes. Apparently she was conceived at Woodstock, which explains the name, and she teaches swimming classes for disabled kids at the local YMCA, which is just very unfair.

Raven and Wick abandoned them at some point, because Clarke is busy discretely staring at Bellamy and moping, and Lexa is busy glaring at everything in general.

“This is sickening,” Lexa declares, and Clarke makes a noncommittal noise of agreement. Echo’s just laughed at something he’s said, and leaned in to squeeze his arm. Clarke _knows_ that move; it’s the universal _I’m ready to go home with you_ move.

She might vomit. It’s a real possibility.

Bellamy shoots her a happy grin before leaving with his date, and Clarke gives him a thumbs up. Then she gets inadvisably drunk, tries to play pool with the school soccer team, threatens to fight some of them when she loses, and then passes out on the green felt tabletop.

She doesn’t remember getting home, but when she wakes up, she’s in her own bed, and Bellamy is crouching down and staring intently at her face. When she squints up at him, he sighs and cracks a smile.

“I heard someone turned into a badass once I left,” he teases. “I can’t believe I wasn’t there for your first gang fight.”

“Let’s not get ahead of ourselves,” she croaks. “It was more of a gang fight _in theory_.” She blinks up at the window—the sunlight streaming in is pale, so it can’t be much later than seven. “Where’s your date?”

Bellamy shakes his head, affectionate. “She took a cab home,” he explains. “Raven called me to help get you home.”

Clarke groans, turning her face into her pillow. _Of course_ Raven called him—so not only is she the best friend that follows him around, she’s now also needy. She’s always sort of been needy, but she’d liked to think it never actually hindered him. “Sorry,” she mumbles, and he starts to stroke her back.

“Don’t be,” he says, and he sounds like he means it. “You come first, always.”

She wishes that made her feel better.

Bellamy has a second date with Echo that night, but offers to cancel to spend time with Clarke.

“I did promise tonight would be you and me,” he points out, but she’s not selfish enough to _actively_ destroy his dating life, and tells him to go, saying she’ll hang out with Raven in their dorm. Mostly, she just drinks cheap brandy, and watches Raven destroy a food processor.

“Those things are expensive,” she says mildly, and Raven shrugs.

“It’ll sell for a lot more when I’m done for it,” she says cryptically, and Clarke eyes the thing with newfound suspicion.

“Did you make the bet with Bellamy for me?” she asks. She’s had a good portion of the bottle, by now, and is now drunk enough for this conversation.

Raven glances up guiltily. “Kind of,” she admits. “I wouldn’t have, if I’d known.”

Clarke shrugs, and takes another swig. She can’t feel her feet, but she’s not sure if that’s the alcohol, or poor blood circulation. She wiggles her toes, just in case. “It’s alright,” she says, and it’s almost true. “I need to get over him, sometime.”

“Well, if it gets you to hang out with me more, I’m a fan,” Raven declares.

“You have Wick,” Clarke teases, and Raven ducks down to hide the blush.

“Wick has the emotional capacity of a turnip,” she shoots, but there’s no real heat to it.

The next day is the end of the week, and their bet, and Clarke can tell Raven’s nervous about it. As far as she knows, Wick hasn’t dated anybody this year, so Raven ever hasn’t had to experience that. She’s not sure what her reaction will be.

“Well, if he does get a girlfriend,” Clarke muses, “And Bellamy gets a girlfriend, at least we’ll have each other.”

“Yeah,” Raven agrees, “We can have hot, reject-loser sex.” She clinks her mini tequila to Clarke’s bottle, and they drink.

The next day, they have lab, and walk in to find Wick waiting with the finished car. He drives it across the room with the remote, and it nudges Raven’s foot before stopping. Taped to the top is a note that reads:

Will you go out with me? (check box, yes or no)

Raven glares up at him. “You’re an idiot,” she calls out.

“That’s not a no,” he grins back.

Raven heaves a sigh, like she’s making a huge sacrifice, and then marks the _yes_ box with her pen. “Are you going to make me pay up?” she asks, sitting beside him.

“I’ll use it to buy you a fancy dinner,” he promises. “Or just lots of booze.”

“I thought he had the emotional capacity of a turnip,” Clarke teases, and Raven shoves her.

“I like turnips,” she admits, and Wick kisses her.

“ _Mr. Wick_ ,” their professor grounds out, and Wick pulls away. He holds her hand the whole class, though.

Clarke isn’t actually alone with Bellamy until a week later, when he marches into her room with a frown. She’s doing her reading in Raven’s bed, because Raven left bits of machinery all over hers before disappearing. She’s so startled by his sudden presence that she spills wine on her shirt.

“Uh,” she says, bewildered. Bellamy frowns down at her.

“Are you avoiding me?” he asks. Truthfully, she’s just been busy with school, and he’s been busy being someone else’s boyfriend, so their schedules just haven’t lined up.

“No,” she says, honest, and he seems to believe her, because he flops down beside her without another word.

“Good,” he sighs, leaning his head on her shoulder. It feels warm, and normal. It feels like _them_ , and she’s _missed_ this. “Echo and I broke up,” he says, and then pauses. “Actually, I don’t know if three dates actually counts as dating, but.”

“I’m sorry,” Clarke says, and she means it. Just because she’s hung up on him, doesn’t mean she wants him to be alone forever. She does want him to be happy. “Why?”

“She made an excellent point,” he shrugs, looking at her textbook. “Apparently, all I ever talk about is my best friend. _Clarke said this, Clarke did that, if Clarke were here…_ ” he glances up at her, grinning wryly. “She thinks I’m in love with you.” He wets his lips, and she can’t breathe, so she doesn’t even try to respond. “I’m pretty sure she’s right,” he admits, and Clarke drops the wine completely.

“Shit,” she says, snatching up the glass, and trying to mop up the spill with her shirt. Bellamy takes off his, to help, but all it does is make Clarke stutter, because he’s warm and he’s half naked and pressed up against her and _he’s in love with her_.

She drops her shirt, and his hands stall, and she turns to look at him. “I kissed you when I was sixteen,” she accuses, “At Anya’s party, and you pretended it never happened!”

Bellamy gapes at her. “You were drunk!” he defends, rubbing his neck nervously. “And you didn’t mention it in the morning, so I thought you were embarrassed. I thought you didn’t want anyone to know.”

“You’re an idiot, Bellamy Blake,” Clarke declares, and kisses him. This time, she wraps her arms around his neck, and she knows what he’s doing. And he’s kissing back, making soft noises of approval against her mouth and pulling her up against him.

It’s warm, and wet, and everything that first kiss should have been. He presses her down against the bed, and wine stain, and bucks into her like he can’t really help it, and they both groan.

“Raven will kill us,” Clarke pants—he’s sucking open mouthed kisses down her neck, pulling her tank top down to bite a bruise into the skin of her breast. “If we have sex on her bed.”

Bellamy glances up, mouth swollen and chin wet, and eyes her desk, calculating. Then he stands, and grips under her thighs to haul her up. She hears several things clatter to the floor as he sets her down—including a desk lamp, she’s pretty sure—but neither of them are about to check.

They’re undressed, and he’s gripping her hips so hard they’ll bruise, when she gasps “I love you too,” in the middle of everything. He just releases the skin of her shoulder with a wet _pop_ to grin down at her.

Clarke can’t feel her legs by the time they finish, and Bellamy pulls out with a shudder, leaning his face in the curve of her neck. “How would she feel about us _sleeping_ in her bed?” he asks.

Clarke grins and tugs him over, curling into him under the covers. They’ve slept together before, of course, but it’s different now. For one, they’re naked, but he’s also curved all around her, possessive. He keeps dropping kisses on the back of her neck and shoulder blade whenever she shifts, and she thinks _I could get used to this_ , before drifting to sleep.

Raven kicks them awake when she finds them in the morning, furious as expected.

“We didn’t have sex in it, though,” Clarke points out. Raven glares.

“You owe me fifty dollars,” Bellamy mumbles through a yawn, before leaning to kiss Clarke sloppily on the mouth.

“You’re getting those fucking sheets dry-cleaned, Griffin,” Raven demands before marching out. Clarke figures she’s lucky she didn’t kill them, or gloat and say _I told you so_ a lot.

“What are you gonna use your winnings for?” she asks, stretching lazily against _her boyfriend_. She knows she’s grinning like an idiot, but he is too, so she doesn’t really care.

“Our wedding?” he teases, but a little nervous, like he’s sort of serious about it. Clarke just rolls her eyes, because he really is oblivious.

“Idiot,” she says against his mouth.

“Takes one to know one,” he grins into the kiss.


End file.
